Our Darker Purpose

I really like this game the story and gameplay are fun

Love it

W game. The best part about it is the amazing soundtrack by Fenwick & the Futures (Nathan Smith).

I am a little sad with how underrated this game is. It takes the basic game mechanics of The Binding of Issac and combines it with an aesthetic and themes of Lord of the Flies and The Rule of Rose. The creepy school and insane children enemies are compelling in the feel of the execution, and the writing is sometimes very sharp and dryly humorous.

If you want an interesting Binding of Issacc like Rougelike, give this a shot!

It's funny, you know? It's been years and years since I've last played Our Darker Purpose. I don't know why I'm only just posting this review now of all times. Maybe it's nostalgia. I just started thinking about it again, trawled through the soundtrack, combed through the wiki, and just like that I was back in the Edgewood Home for Lost Children.

This game is difficult. In some cases, I would even say it's unfair. But it's also worth your time. The art style is gorgeous, the writing is top-notch, and the gameplay is a loop that had me always saying "I can make it - just one more run." It isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I would still argue that this is an overlooked and underappreciated gem in the roguelike genre.

I wish I knew what became of the developers - this is the first and only game created by Avidly Wild Games, and they're otherwise completely untraceable. Are they still out there, creating unsung gems? Are they well? Are they happy? I hope so, because this game they've made is very near and very dear to my heart.

Our Darker Purpose is not a game for people who want a fun time. The game shows a level of contempt for the player character that, while not unmatched in the roguelite genre, is nonetheless significant. The majority of between-run unlocks are situational at best, and even the ones that sound like direct benefits can ultimately be what ruins a run. Get this game if you're looking for a challenge to overcome.

Our Darker Purpose is basically a less random, more skillful, and better version of Binding of Issac.

Go room to room killing enemies, finding items, secrets, etc until you get to the end level boss, kill it, and progress to the next floor. You get to pick the level you go to which gives a description of it, showing what enemies and environment effects will be going on. You'll level up occasionally which gives you a choice between two permanent buffs.

The game doesn't let you do a full run off the bat. Your initial playthroughs are limited to the first set of levels until you reach the first main boss. Once you beat it, you get an ending and then in your future runs beating the first main boss takes you to the second set of levels. The first time you beat the second main boss, your run ends again and you're given another ending. You can then go to the third main boss, get another ending, and then will have access to the final boss. The game requires a minimum of at least 4 runs to complete the whole thing.

The game does have some issues and isn't as refined as Binding of Issac is, but what makes it better is the removal of the random nonsense in BoI that would completely screw over a run and essentially end it. Items in this are almost always helpful and I don't recall any situation where the game screwed me over causing my death. Likewise, the permanent buffs from level ups are always helpful. It only took me 6 total runs to complete the game (meaning I only died twice). Skill is much more of a factor here than Binding of Issac. For people that would like more time with the game, there are a bunch of unlockables that are challenging and time consuming to complete.

Not much more to say other than that I'd play this any day over BoI. I enjoy winning or losing based on my skill, not whether some random thing caused me to die.

The game is really enjoyable and challenging. The difficulty cap is ultimately set quite high, thus making it replayable as much as it is rewarding for reaching ever further, while, quite admittedly, it may be off-putting at times. It also has great atmosphere with its grotesque style (reminescent of Tim Burton) alongside with gorgeous and fitting art design and plot setting as well as lovely soundtrack. Gameplay is not much different from Isaac and yet feels a bit slower paced, just enough to make it less frustrating. Another good thing is the pre-run upgrade system which gives a little more control of the setting while reducing the RNG factor.

Overall score of 8/10

Binding of Isaac meets Tim Burton in this amazing rogue-like/lite game that offers captivating gameplay and atmospheric soundtrack to complete the package. Best purchase I did during this sale.

I gave this an honest try, wanting to like it but there is 3 very big reasons I cannot recommend it.

1.- The style is odd and unappealing to me, the game in general looks like a flash game quality wise. the style of the animation seems to be cardboard puppets or similar and it makes a game look borish. Add to that that the controls are bad, instead of letting you aim with your mouse the correct angles, the game makes you shoot up, down, left or right using the arrow keys, making it hard to hit on an angle unlike other games of the genre

2.- Now, after mentioning that the graphics look really basic, how was this game optimized, if at all? I am not sure what issue this is causing in my machine but every so often the game freezes, waits to load graphically then continues. Why does a game so basic looking is giving my graphic card a run for its money? Keep in mind I can play games like Friday the 13th and Dead by daylight without any sort graphical glitch on max settings.

3.- The game is cheapish and luck based, in this aspect, it is somewhat similar to The binding of Issac, but unlike Issac were even if you dont get the best upgrades you could manage to complete it, this one REALLY depends on you getting really good upgrades to stand a chance against higher floor bosses at all.

Sorry, I recommend you skip this one unless you are helplessly addicted to top view shooting games.

Also seems the game has a very rabious fanbase that accepts no critizism of it. As I said, played it (more than the hours steam report as I was able to do about 10 runs) and this game is really not for me, it lacks the charm other similar games of the genre has and it looks completely awful.

At the moment I heavily recomend this game, though I haven't fully cleared it (when I do I will update this review). If you're a lontime fan of the rougelike/rougelite genera you should have no qualms with picking this game up for full price, if you're new and your skeptical then I would still recomend picking up full price but if you have a tight budget then consider putting it on your wishlist and picking it up when you find the funds or when it goes on sale.

As a cavieat to that I will say that if you haven't played rougelike/rougelite games that you should understand what those labels mean. This type of game will challenge you and it will frustrate you, but if your patient and dedicated then you will find that the feeling you get when you push past whatever was holding you back before is one of the most rewarding things you'll experience in gaming.

General Gameplay:
The gameplay of this game is increadibly fun and while it's difficulty can be frustrating at times, like many games in the rougelike/rougelite it's increadibly rewarding when you do finally manage to beat whatever you might have gotten stuck on before. The controls are very smooth and responsive and everything works as described. I haven't encountered any bugs or glitches so far.

Design Of Levels & Enemies:
The design of the enemies/levels/rooms/hazards/bosses is such that there is a very smooth difficulty curve. You really never find yourself in a position where the game is impossible to beat and you will never find yourself in a position where your victory is assured. Yes, because of the RNG involved in the game you will find that some runs are easier and some runs are harder, but every run win is a victory earned and every defeat will be something in the end you can only really blame on yourself and mistakes you've made.

My only gripe about the level design is that the procedural engine requires that the levels broken into linear branches. I.E. if a room has two diffrent doors that lead to two diffrent branches then those branches won't meet up again even if two rooms in those branches end up touching later on. Though it doesn't really distract from gameplay so it's a really minor thing.

Story/Atmosphere/Theme:
The atmosphere of this game is increadibly compelling with an artstyle and soundtrack that while simple are quite compelling. The theme is very dark and sinister and after more and more of the backstory is revealed about diffrent enemies and bosses and about the games world in general you'll find yourself wondering what exactly happened in the halls of Edgewood before Cordy woke up after the encounter again and what is really going on in the school.

I have noticed many people commenting about the game's story feeling unfinished, but I can't really comment on that due to the fact that I haven't actually finished the game yet.

My only advice in that regard is that if you do get this game that you should keep playing, the end might not exactly be where you thought it was and it might take a few more runs through before you can get to it. That's something I learned that plesantly surprised me.

Replayability:
The game like many of the more recent additions of this genera is predicated on being replayable. You will try and fail multiple times before you're finally able to succeed, and when you do succeed you'll unlock new content that will give you a reason to play through a few more times.

The game also has a system where you can customize your character to a degree between runs. This is not only something that is nessary for you to do to be able to get through to the endgame content, but it's also something that allows you to experiment with competley diffrent playstyles and turn the game into something diffrent. An example of this would be that after you complete the prerequisite challenge and then unlock the option with the games credit system you can change Cordy's dodge roll into a blink. Another example of this is the option to drastically increase Cordy's health pool at the start for the downside of not being able to replenish your health normally. There are a number of big changes you can make like those as well as a very large number of minor tweeks you can make as well.

As I mentioned in the above paragraph there are a multitude of challenges in the game and they all reward something, be that additonal credits, lore, item unlocks, character options, or even staight character upgrades. Some of them are rather simple, while others are diaboliclly difficult. If you are a completionist you will not be wanting for something to do with this game. Though if I remember correctly there is one specific challenge regarding the champion cat enemy that can appear that is either bugged or is just virtually impossible because the chance of finding that particular variant is effectivley zero.

Oh, and did I mention that this game also has a hard mode for those of among us who might find the base games content too easy? I haven't tried it myself, so I can't speak about it, but whenever finish the game's base content then I'll be sure to let you know if it's balanced as well as the rest of the game.

tl;dr
This game is better than Binding of Issac, and this is coming from someone who has completed the original Binding of Issac and has 100% cleared Binding of Issac Rebirth and it's Afterbirth DLC (currently working on Afterbirth+ so I can leave a proper review on that game)

Take Binding of Isaac. Then put Tim Burton in charge of design. Add some RPG elements, and more player choices. Throw in a more fleshed-out backstory. Top with an awesomely epic soundtrack, and you get Our Darker Purpose.

this game is similar to binding of isaac but it is not a rip-off of binding of isaac. The game has gothic atmosphere and tone. it has a great replay value and its hard(very hard). The game has a mystery that you need to discover and figure out what happened. Every life is a completely different which makes the replay value much more better. Unlike Binding of isaac you have to understand the enemies, because every approach to an enemy is different, the bosses have different types of attack and unlike binding of isaac where you have to just dodge and attack them, here you have to figure out every move of every boss, so unlike TBOI the bosses kind of remind bosses from dark souls. After you beat the game you unlock its hard mode which gives everyone new attack move(as if the game wasn hard at first).Overall its a hard game but its very addictive that doesnt forgive mistakes.
9\10

Let me start off by saying that while I enjoyed this game for a while, I found it lacking. Most of the items found during runs don't greatly change the way the game is played. There will be a lot of "+10% damage" or "+15% speed" items that don't feel terribly rewarding to get. This makes every run feel very similar. The rolling is a nice mechanic. One of the things that bothered me the most was the hit boxes, both on myself and the enemies. While the sprites are cute, they often cover more area than the unit actually occupies, leading to a blurred line as to where the enemy can be hit and will contact you, or not. It's not altogether a bad game, it's just that for a game that requires many many runs to progress through, it seldom left me wanting to try again

"Our Darker Purpose" is a "me too" roguelike that no doubt means to sail in the wake of runaway successes like The Binding of Isaac. Unlike the others, though, ODP offers significantly more in the way of RPG elements.

In terms of gameplay, ODP is very much in the real-time roguelike tradition, with a series of rooms in which the player faces challenges of combat or dexterity. You are locked in a room until you complete it, and then may enter an adjoining one.

Pros
Compared to other roguelikes, ODP has level progression per session, with choices of perks at each level-up. Your choices are effectively a build for the session, and reduce the randomness normally associated with roguelikes.

The gothic art style is a good choice, and was no doubt influenced by Edward Gorey, a personal favorite of mine, as well as more recent expressions of the genre, such as "Don't Starve."

ODP has a story that unfolds in fragments, and while it's hardly a masterpiece, it's far more than one would expect for the genre.

Cons
The lack of controller support is a big mark against the game, and an oversight that is more egregious considering the genre.

I like the sketchy, gothic art style, but ODP's art style feels amateur and inconsistent. Some objects feature sharp, fine lines and hard edges, while others are soft and look like they've been heavily resampled. Also, there is insufficient variation in room props. I've seen many pixel-perfect-identical desks or chairs spawn in neat grids in the room.

The pacing is poorly managed, and the rooms quickly become boring and repetitive. Many rooms require far more patience than actual skill, at times making the game a tedious slog.

Pickups are mostly uninteresting and give small bonuses to stats like health, critical chance, and damage. Roguelikes usually feature a variety of highly powerful objects or abilities, or at a minimum, very interesting ones with multiplicative synergy. ODP's pickups lack synergy and (generally ) only linearly affect stats.

The game's difficulty is disappointing. The game is very easy when compared to hardcore roguelikes, and will probably disappoint players who expect a serious challenge.

People who like Binding of Isaac and similar games will love Our Darker Purpose. The game has its own, beautiful hand-drawn art style and lots of interesting items and enemies. It is also quite hard (took me 22 hours until I've finally been able to beat the final boss). Every playthrough is different, and as you aquire different items each time you'll also have to play very different each time.

You will die often when starting to play Our Darker Purpose. But that doesn't matter, because with every achievement you get you'll also unlock classes, which are permament and can be chosen as you like.

The only downside to this game are the strange controller keybinds. The inventory and log, for example, are both on the right analog stick, as is the "use" button. It's also not possible to change this keybinds, which is a bit sad. However, this is just a small problem and the rest of the game more than makes up for it.

tl;dr: It's Binding of Isaac as a girl. If you liked Binding of Isaac, you'll like this game.

It's obvious -- an overhead, oldschool Zelda-inspired, 4-directional dual-stick shooter in which you play as a hapless, ambiguously 'innocent' child in a dark, gothic setting, moving from floor to floor collecting powerups and fighting huge, challenging bosses in a rogulike gameplay shell. Yep, it's Binding of Isaac. But not exactly.

First of all, the little aesthetic differences on the surface; to start off with, you play as a girl (though one could argue you can technically play as a "girl" in BoI, and this game's Cordy looks kinda like Eve, but that's besides the point). And instead of tears, you shoot fireballs. And instead of going down an increasingly surreal basement, you go up an increasingly surreal schoolhouse / orphanage. And instead of vicious, freakish abominations of nature, you fight vicious, freakish orphaned children (and eventually abominations of nature). Yeah, really similar stuff... though overall ODP has a slightly less cartoonish, more Tim Burton-esque gothic style to it, which depending on your tastes may look a lot better than BoI's, and it's at least marginally "classier", with a LOT less bodily fluids and toilet humor, though its share of less-than-prudish bits here and there; it's more on the "somewhat unsettling/disturbing, but kind of cool" level than the "gross-out until you get used to it and just laugh the rest of the way" level BoI sits on.

But what about the gameplay? Well, it is indeed EXTREMELY similar to Isaac, but with a few fundamental differences. The biggest ones are:
A) an experience/levelling system, which guarantees at least semi-regular increases in power comparable to a useful passive item upgrade, especially if you're one of those players like me who insists on clearing every single room in every floor. This kind of replaces BoI's item rooms on each floor, though this is somewhat of a blessing since level-up bonuses are nearly ALWAYS good if not great.
B) a persistant upgrade system to make yourself or the world around you more geared for your success as you build up tokens earned by completing floors and getting achievements, which you can spend on either 'lessons' (passive effects you earn through achievements as well) or your 'guidance counselor' (which is basically a way to bank extra currency for gradual bonuses, similar to the coin bank in BoI in a way)
C) the ability to DODGE ROLL. You have no idea how good this is and how it changes the experience compared to BoI! Not only is it just a universally useful thing to have but it allows you to, say, take a slow movement-speed build and not be forced to tank countless hits from enemies/projectiles that are literally unavoidable without speed past a certain threshold like in BoI.

There are other smaller differences, like the fact you get to manually choose your next floor out of 2-4 choices and see the variables they have (kind of like curses in BoI but often with both positive and negative, or even outright positive, effects)... or the fact that instead of bombs which I say are of dubious quality anyway in BoI, you get chalk which is basically a very rare but very powerful utility that can be used both offensively and defensely. Also, as opposed to your regular bombable secret rooms, in this game they're rather obvious and easy to find and only occur once every few floors on average, anyway.

Aside from those points, it's more or less an identical game. But that's not a bad thing. Like so many great games of PC gaming past copied the original Rogue and created the genre we now know as roguelike, ODP copies Binding of Isaac which is this generation's most well-known and quite possibly well-made roguelike. And it is a great game. There's really no reason I can think of NOT to buy it if you like Isaac at all, or just action rpg/overhead shooter/roguelikes in a general sense. The graphics are unique and lovely, the music is atmospheric, the gameplay is tight and spot-on, and it never seems unfair, far less than Isaac.

I suppose if I had one criticism, it'd be that it's more 'subdued' than BoI... besides in an aethetic sense as mentioned earlier, there are definitely far less ways to make your character / shots nearly as 'wild' or unique as you can in Isaac, and it's basically a matter of doing what you can to make them stronger, faster, have longer range, and add as many supplementary alternate 'bullets' as you can through various means. But since the game's designed and balanced around this less over-the-top style it's really not that big of a deal.

I must admit, when I first heard about this game I imediately thought it was a Binding of Isaac clone. It has a similar structure, and a lot familiar feelings associated with it. However this game plays a lot differently to BoI. The story is interesting, and has me really interested to find out what will happen. The patterns of monsters are frustrating at first(like BoI) but you will eventually get the hand of it and when in critical danger you can roll to move away faster. That ability alone makes this game a lot different to BoI. All in all I would recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of roguelikes. The items are really neat to explore and use, and the lessons are a nice add-on, as well as the counselor system.

Still a fun game but hasn't recieved an update in quite some time.

Our Darker Purpose has had the unfortunate luck of existing in a world that has already experienced The Binding of Isaac and will be forcibly labeled as a pretender and compared to that game until the end of time. Let it be known that looks are quite deceiving, and Our Darker Purpose's resemblance to Edmund McMillan's indie blockbuster begins and ends with the top-down, twin-stick shooter appearance that both share.

Where The Binding of Isaac is a fast-paced, almost bullet-hell game, Our Darker Purpose is much less about quick reflexes and more about patience and planning. You will never achieve Isaac levels of speed and destructiveness in this game, because that isn't the point or the core of its challenge. This game is about endurance and taking in the world around you. There are times I've felt more engaged by Our Darker Purpose's gameplay than Isaac's simply because it is a more demanding game. If Isaac is about reflexes and becoming mighty, then Our Darker Purpose is about staying two steps ahead of the game, because once you perform any action, you are committed to it.

The game features a wonderful art direction and soundtrack that blends together into a beautifully gothic piece of design that I fell in love with from the first trailer I watched. There is a detailed lore and story woven throughout this game that is surprisingly esoteric and adds a flavor of mystery to this pleasantly Dark little journey. Similar to the original Dark Souls, the different elements of this game support each other in such a way that were any one of them removed or altered, the entire game would lose its unique atmosphere.

Long story short: Don't go into this game expecting anything similar to The Binding of Isaac. It isn't a copycat just because it bears some surface level similarities. If you allow yourself to approach this game on its own terms, you will find a unique game whose world is enchanting and challenging in its own right.

There are definitely things to like in Our Darker Purpose. It has great atmosphere backed up by a great art style and music. Everything is functional, but the more I played, the more one thought kept coming back: "The Binding of Isaac did this better."

Our Darker Purpose plays very similarly to Binding of Isaac, but just about everything it does, Isaac does better. Isaac has more variety of powerups and enemies. Isaac has a deeper and more interesting resource management system. Our Darker Purpose is much more focussed on the moment-to-moment combat then big picture balancing of resources. There are no keys, and your "bombs" are used exclusively for fighting. Most upgrades offer only numerical stat increases. The actual gameplay, however, has different ideas. Hit detection is awkward, enemies and hazards are more annoying or frustrating than interesting, and for all the focus on numerical upgrades, you never really feel more powerful than when you start. Isaac had it's share of numerical upgrades, but on any given run, you were bound to find at least one item that fundamentally changed how you approached the rest of the game. Each run felt different and unique. Each run of Our Darker Purpose just feels the same, but with the numbers shuffled around a bit.

At the end of the day, if you spend all your time with a game thinking about a different, better game, then that's not a very good sign for the game you're playing. If you've completed everything in The Binding of Isaac and really need something similar to hold you over until the remake, you'll get some enjoyment out of Our Darker Purpose. To everyone else, I cannot recommend this game as long as The Binding of Isaac exists.

This game is a hidden little gem and I really wish people paid more attention to it. There's pretty much no flaws to it, other then a few meager little nitpicks.

Now first off, I want you to imagine Tim Burton made the Binding of Isaac. Now remove anything remotely similar to Johnny Depp. That's what our Darker Purpose is. The game plays almost identically to BOI, albeit a bit more slow-paced. You collect items and level up every once and a while.

This game is a rogue-like, it has randomly generated floors, each with randomly generated rooms. Many of these floors will have a certain level-feeling (i.e. To Big, Leaderless, Power Struggle, Sensetive, etc.) that can make or break your playthrough. It's very rare that a death in this game will be the game's fault, although it won't be uncommon that your playthrough may get harder thanks to the luck of the draw present in all rogue-likes.

In short, Our Darker Purpose is a fine piece of work, and by-and-far one of my more favorite games. It has a nice sense of humour, a gorgousley grim art-style, plays near perfectly, and is hard to boot.

Our Darker Purpose is essentially a bullet Hell rogue-like with a passive, persistent upgrade system. I do like the game but right now, I cannot recommend it for the simple reason it needs more time to bake. Currently, my two major issues with the game are gameplay and balance.

The game lacks a decent reward system. Your character starts off weak and stays weak throughout the game. You can earn experience, level up, and get 1 of 2 perks. Unfortunately, some of the perks are completely worthless (for example, -10% move speed for +2 healing pack capacity.) while others offer such a negligble benefit you can hardly tell they are there (+50% drop rate to items.) You do find gear that can be useful but a lot of them don't work on bosses, others are broken, and some are so poorly implemented they do not make sense (2% health per 5 enemies killed. Worthless when you have around 100 life on average; why bother?). Health, coins, and chalk (bombs essentially) drop in the game at a pathetic rate, leaving players scrambling for health. I have had several runs where healing packs don't even drop. You can buy items at vending machines but you cannot rely on them for survivability for long. Lastly, you can donate credits (which you earn by completing levels) to unlock lasting benefits called "lessons" or donate to a counselor for passive, persistent upgrades. You can only carry so many lessons and you only get more by donating to the counselor. Unfortunately, you are forced to waste thousands of credits on the counselor and you only get upgrades every other level. So while it is great to get +2 health pack capacity, it really sucks wasting 500 credits and being told the counselor was "expecting more." I get the purpose behind it but since you get so few credits per level, it's insulting more than anything.

The enemy balance right now is all over the place. Most are fine the way they are while a few are ridiculously cheap (firing homing clouds that phase through everything and confuse you [interesting bug with that; if you exit to the menu while confused, the menu controls are inverted]). Enemy strength scales with level so you take more damage while having very little way to heal yourself due to the aforementioned awful drop rates. Bosses are incredbily tedious due to how long fights last. If boss health was shaved 20%, I think the balance would be right. Currently, all you get for defeating bosses is decent amount of experience and progression to the next level.

As to the graphics, I greatly enjoy the grim feel of the game. The music is appropriate and the sound effects are adequate.

Due to the lack of balance at this point, I cannot recommend it. I enjoy hard games. I have spent way more time than I should in Binding of Issac and Dark Souls. Those games offered a sense of accomplishment when you defeated a hard enemy. Our Darker Purpose offers little for anything you accomplish. That said, I would watch the progression of the game. The developers are working hard and constantly updating the game. I believe when all is said and done, Our Darker Purpose will be a great product.

This game shows a great deal of promise and has some interesting mechanics that could potentially provide a nice change of pace compared to other games in the genre.

The problem, at least in its current state (review written at launch) is that it really doesn't stand up well in comparison to obvious influences like Binding of Isaac. I will list some of the issues I have with the game at launch, some may sound minor but have a very real impact on the way the game is played.

-- movement speed --

The starting character (there may be others to unlock) is woefully sluggish. This slow movement combined with much-quicker-than-you enemy projectiles and othewrwise acceptable mechanics like your momentum affecting your own projectiles can lead to frustrating and needlessly tiresome encounters.

There are a number of perks available at level up that profess to increase movement speed, these are either completely incorrect in their supposed effect or the gains are far too minimal as even after taking more than one such perk there is never any noticable increase in your movement speed.

The interesting thing is the roll mechanic which acts as a little boost to evade enemies, the inclusion of which would have been unnecessary if the overall movement wasn't so awful. What I'm curious about is whether the roll was added to compensate for the overly slow base movement speed or whether the base movement speed was deliberately made that slow so as to make the planned roll mechanic relevant and useful.

-- hitboxes / collision detection --

The hitboxes on both the player character and some enemies is, in my opinion, a little off. I suppose the issue here is that the hitbox on the player character is a little too big, a hit is registered even though your character sprite wasn't contacted by the projectile, environmental effect, etc etc. It's true that with continued play you would probably adapt to this slightly too big hit box and learn to compensate but you shouldn't have to, a game like this needs a reliable, accurate and finely tuned hit detection system.

In contrast, enemy hit boxes seem, at times, bafflingly arbitrary and with zero reference to their character sprites. More than once I've seen a projectile pass straight though an enemy without registering a hit, only for the next projectile on the same trajectory to instead register a successful hit. Again, this type of game thrives on tight, accurate hit detection, which at present, just isnt here.

A lesser issue is with collision detection on environmental objects. This could well be tied to the above issue of your slightly oversized hit box but occasionally you do get stuck on environmental objects, even though it looks as though there is room enough to get by.

-- pacing --

This is more of a personal one but I really feel the pacing of the game needs to be addressed, both in terms of character progression and item acquisition. In short, leveling up seems to take a little too long. Combined with the...underwhelming, shall we say, perks that you get on level up, this makes the whole level system seem honestly quite redundant. I never once found myself pleased, excited or glad to have levelled up, it just doesn't feel like much of a reward.

Item acquisition is probably a bigger issue, more specifically WHEN you get items. This game lists Binding of Isaac as one influencing game and it really shows. In Isaac however, there is a reliable and reasonable pacing to item acquisition. By and large each floor has one item room and an item from the boss room. There's no guarantee either one will be any good but at least there are reliably (keys allowing), AT LEAST two items per floor.

This game does not have item rooms on each floor nor does it provide items as rewards after boss fights. In fact your most reliable source of items are the occasional mini-boss enemies (like elites from Diablo). These enemies are fairly few and far between however, you MIGHT find one per floor and some floors don't have any by design. This means you end up with very few items and the majority of itemsa you do find are unremarkable. I'm being quite generous when I say unremarkable by the way.

I should note you can get items from vending machines but most are limited use and almost all are more than you can afford given the relative scarcity of money.

All in all, despite how critical you may feel I've been, I really do think this game has potential and there are some things to enjoy here but there are more things that I feel need to be addressed by the developer before this game can really be recommended.

In short, if you want to play an enjoyable but challanging twin stick shooter with tight controls and good pacing, play Binding of Isaac. It's pretty much all this game aspires to be and is considerably cheaper to boot.